Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) (11 page)

“You’ll take care of them?” Isa asked when Nat turned back, her forehead crinkled.

Nathalie picked up Ikylla. “Of course I will.”

“Phone on the table,” Isa said as she opened the fridge to riffle for food to take with them. Neither she nor Murmur had eaten. They’d need more than sushi. “They won’t let me take it.”

“Steve?”

“Message.”

“Troy and I will call every damn hour until he answers.”

“I had no doubt.”

“Ice.” She held out a hand as Isa shoved fruit in her bag. She tipped her head at the doorway and rolled her eyes. “Wow. The contents totally change the package.”

She surprised a smile from Isa. What a perfect way to summarize the vast difference between Daniel and Murmur, even though Murmur inhabited Daniel’s body.

She sincerely hoped no one—like his lawyer—would notice.

“Okay,” Isa said, settling her bag strap on one shoulder and picking up the sushi container. “I trust Mr. Alvarez and I will be sharing a car? Neither of us has had supper.”

They shared a car.

Delmedico’s civil rights speech combined with Nathalie’s concern with protecting Isa propelled her down the stairs. But when the agents ushered them to their sedan, she reached for Murmur’s hand.

The lawyer repeated his promise: seventy-two hours.

Three days.

***

Even though her appetite had died, she and Murmur ate and shared a bottle of water.

Was it odd that it didn’t occur to her to be shy about drinking after him? True, she’d been intimate with Daniel five or more years ago. He was dead. Someone else was walking around in his body. Did it matter from a contagion standpoint that Murmur had shared her body with her before taking over Daniel’s?

As if by unspoken, mutual accord, they said nothing. What was there to say when everything would be overheard by AMBI agents?

Murmur had been exhausted when she’d taken him to the apartment. She didn’t know how he’d managed to stay awake in the two hours since.

Should she have run? Gone underground? Not that she knew how to do that. She huffed out a breath. She couldn’t have run and kept Murmur on his feet with shots of her magic. Not for long. The only other option would have been abandoning him.

She snorted and laced her fingers with his.

He tightened his grip.

Isa leaned back and stared out the window. Oncoming headlights began as distant spots of light that grew to encompass her vision before flashing past and leaving her in darkness. Perhaps they hypnotized her or lulled her into trance.

For as they crested Snoqualmie Pass and sped through the night into the high desert of Eastern Washington, Isa no longer sat in the back of a car.

She again crouched beside the orange-red flicker of a fire she could neither see, nor feel. It cast slanting, dancing shadows across the pale sand beneath her. Before her stretched a sand painting. To either side, washed orange by firelight, she made out the stones laying out a circle.

There, framing the painting, were the four sacred mountains. And the rivers that defined the boundaries of Navajo land. Inside was the sacred land of the Dine.

A brown hand, knuckles thickened, emerged from the dark opposite her, sprinkling colored sand with a practiced flick of the wrist and twist of the fingers.

The throb of a spell song she couldn’t hear vibrated her body as if her sinew and bones were the drum skin stretched tight to communicate the pulse of the spell.

Sand fell from those fingers.

The song thrumming in her blood resolved into a tug, then to longing.

Homesickness? She hadn’t been gone for a few hours yet.

Black sand sifted down to form a female figure beside the northernmost of the four sacred mountains.

Another flick of black sand and a second female figure appeared in the painting, inside the bounds of the frame. Two more figures were painted into the depiction of the village where Isa had grown up. There were the symbols for Ruth’s clan, and her hogan with two pinyon trees behind it.

At the center of the sand painting, the black female figure sat atop a sand painting.

A chill brought goose bumps to Isa’s skin.

The black figure was meant to be her.

This was a summons.

The rise and fall of the spell song fell to the almost silent hum of tires on concrete.

“Seek the tribe.”

The spoken command echoed inside the confines of Isa’s head.

The sand painting dominating her vision exploded.

Isa started. Sand scored her face, but the dance of cold firelight held her fast.

Colored sand drifted down like snowflakes floating on the breeze.

She leaned closer, for the sand created a new painting.

An outline of a black, winged demon with emerald eyes.

“This isn’t protective custody,” Isa said when the AMBI agents dumped her and Murmur out of their car into the icy predawn high desert in Eastern Washington.

Four soldiers, armed with automatic rifles and dressed in fatigues, surrounded them. National Guard?

She followed Murmur’s gaze as he surveyed the razor wire fence, guard tower, and gate being locked behind the sedan fast disappearing into the early morning light.

A bitter-sounding laugh escaped her in a visible puff. “This is a prison . . .”

“Containment camp, ma’am,” one of the young men said.

“Containment? Nice word. Are we really doing this? Again?”

“What?” Murmur asked, slicing her a sharp look.

“When magic first emerged in the world, our kind were hunted and killed. Or rounded up into government-sponsored camps,” Isa said.

“Ma’am. Sir,” the young man said. “We’ll show you to the barracks where you will be searched for Live Ink. We’ll go over a few regulations at that time, but the first, and most important, is this: Magic is strictly prohibited.”

They had the automatic weapons to back it up.

“If you’ll come this way? Women are housed in the eastern facility, men in the west.”

“Delmedico has sixty-seven hours,” Murmur growled.

Isa shivered, both from the cold emanating from within, and at his tone.

The soldiers installed them in their separate quarters. Threadbare bunks were jammed into the long, frigid metal hanger.

No windows relieved the gloom inside. Only bare incandescent lightbulbs lit the building and, as far as she could see, offered the only heat. Wind rattled the metal shell.

“Am I required to stay in here?” Isa asked the young woman who’d examined her for Ink.

“No, ma’am,” she replied. “The men’s quarters are off limits, of course. And the commander’s office. Other than that, stay inside the fence, please.”

Isa recognized that as an “or else.”

“You’ll be assigned a work detail within the next few days,” the young soldier said. “Once the need has been assessed.”

Isa’s heart thudded to her toes.

Late in the day, when the temperature outside rose briefly above freezing, ramshackle green-and-blue buses began arriving.

They pulled up to a row of low, cinderblock buildings just inside the gate, and disgorged people who clutched bundles of belongings to their chests. They were herded inside the buildings in groups of twenty. Men. Women. Every shape, size, and color, but no children. Small mercy. It meant that Isa could guess that the resolution that had snagged Live Ink artists had been expanded to round up anyone with Live Ink. How widespread was this? Seattle? King County? The entire state?

The groups didn’t emerge from the buildings.

Wind wafted the hitched breath and the muffled vocalization of people crying to where Isa stood avoiding the filthy patches of snow in the dusty yard. Shaking, Isa retreated to the women’s barracks and marked the passing of the hours. Fifty-five hours left to Delmedico’s promise.

That night, none of the lights turned out. And the two wool blankets on her cot couldn’t warm her. Unable to drive the chill out of her bones, she pulled on every article of clothing she’d brought with her. It wasn’t enough for more than a chilly night of fitful sleep punctuated by a coyote howling in the hills behind the camp and a raven cawing in unbroken answer. In her restless dreams, the cries resolved into an echoing message.

“Seek the tribe.”

Twelve hours before Delmedico’s promised deadline, two days after the busses had brought people to the buildings beside the gate, the soldiers let them out. Twenty-four shivering women trooped into the barracks, took one look at Isa, and filled the bunks farthest from her spot beside the door.

Another set of busses rattled through the gates.

The women, when they spoke to Isa at all, explained they’d been in containment. In quarantine. Waiting to see whether their tattoos would come off before they were brought into the general population of the camp.

At dinner in the mess hall that evening, they discovered that the camp hadn’t been supplied to feed the eighty-three people brought into quarantine plus the seventy-four of them already in residence.

Isa hadn’t seen Murmur since they’d arrived.

She went to bed with an ache in her middle that wasn’t entirely about the lack of food. Or the cold.

At 10
P.M.
, Delmedico’s zero hour came. And went.

Isa waited for the explosion of ink dark magic she’d assumed would indicate Murmur’s disillusionment had gotten the better of him.

Silence on all fronts.

Even among her barracks mates. None of them spoke above hushed tones, as if by opening their mouths, they let more frigid air into their hearts.

Some of the women, to combat the cold, pulled their thin mattresses from their bunks, put them side by side, and huddled together beneath the combined blankets, sharing body heat.

Isa wrapped herself into her two thin blankets and put her back to them.

“I know what you are,” a woman’s voice muttered from behind her.

Isa started and turned.

A woman with velvety brown eyes, and a lined olive complexion fading to yellow, sat on the bottom bunk next to hers. She hunched into her down jacket, blowing on her clasped fingers.

“You know why none of us can get near you, right? You’re cold,” she said.

A glitter like light arcing across frost ran through Isa’s middle. Frowning, she sat up. “Cold?”

“I don’t mean you aren’t a nice person,” the woman hastened to say. “You gave Marie your scarf and hat.”

“She didn’t have near enough clothes,” Isa said.

The woman nodded. “Like I said. You’re nice. When I say cold, I mean you, yourself. You’re cold. Getting near you makes the rest of us colder. Is it your Live Ink?”

She started to shake her head, then paused. “Maybe.” Did it matter that it was the absence, not the presence, of her Live Ink?

“Should you be in quarantine?”

“I—no.”

Isa shifted her turtleneck so the woman could see the scar on her throat. “My Ink came off.”

The woman flinched. Her right hand clamped her left forearm. “I thought—”

“That was a death sentence?” Isa finished for her. “It is. Sometimes it’s just slower than others.”

Looking away, the woman cleared her throat. “If you don’t have Live Ink, why did the bastards bring you here?”

“I’m a Live Ink artist. What did you mean, ‘you know what I am’?” Isa asked.

The woman rubbed her hands together again. “I was talking about the cold and the fact that you didn’t look at all surprised when no one would bunk anywhere near you. It’s a little like hell, isn’t it? You ever read the Popol Vuh, the Mayan book of the underworld?”

“No.”

Her gaze darted to Isa’s blue palms.

Would the stains ever fade?

“Huh. The Mayans painted their sacrifices with Maya blue. I thought . . . Well. Among other things, the Popol Vuh describes the nine levels of the Mayan underworld. One of the levels is the House of Cold. You’re living there. If you survive this goddamned camp, get to a library and check out that book. The heroes in the myth cycle survived all nine levels.”

“I’m not Mayan,” Isa said, then wondered how she knew. If she could know.

The woman shrugged. “I could be imagining things. Don’t usually. But it’s possible.” She pulled up her left sleeve. Vivid green-and-orange tattoo Ink twined around her wrist and up her arm.

The stylized serpent opened yellow eyes and met Isa’s gaze. The weight of his age settled on her chest. A whisper of chill breathed past her, stirring hair she hadn’t gotten to wash in two days.

The camp didn’t have the water to spare for showers yet, either.

“Kukulcan,” the woman said. “The feathered serpent. He knows things. He tells me you’re in Xibalba.”

“In what?”

“Where,” she corrected. “Xibalba. The Place of Fear. Hell. The Mayan version.”

“Why?” Isa asked.

The woman’s gaze turned inward as if she listened, but she shook her head. “You could carry Mayan blood. You could have simply brushed up against the realm of the Mayan gods. I did when I got this tattoo. Nearly didn’t survive it. Some nights, the nightmares of having my heart cut out are . . . well. Your path is different. You’re taking the hero’s path. The path of the Hero Twins.”

“I’m neither hero nor twin.” Isa glanced at her hands again, recalled a jungle she’d never before seen, and a voice saying,
brother, a petitioner.
Was she?

The woman shook her head. “We don’t understand it, either. According to Mayan belief, humans were put on earth to nourish the gods.”

Isa’s head came up. “Through sacrifice.”

“Blood was enough,” she said. “It didn’t always require life.”

Isa glanced at the woman’s tattoo feeding on her blood and magic. “You would know.”

She traced a finger along the serpent’s feathered back as if caressing it. “He’s welcome to my blood. You and I both know you don’t give without receiving something of equal value in return.”

“Is it equal value?” Isa asked. Funny. She’d never thought to ask that question before Murmur.

“More than equal.”

“Even when you dream your bloody death too many nights?”

“Even that nourishes the gods,” the woman said. “Most people are never called to serve the gods. Kukulcan says you walked into their realm and volunteered.”

“I walked into the Navajo reservation and learned the ways of the Holy Ones,” Isa protested. “Not the bloodthirsty gods of a long-dead civilization.”

And yet. Isa knew full well that she didn’t get to pick and choose gods. When you walked the spirit realms, you encountered gods and monsters both. Sometimes, they were one and the same. And even the traditions of sacrifice were as old as the human race itself.

The dream she’d had in the hospital, of her teachers changing shape, she recognized the one Joseph had taken on. It stared at her from the woman’s arm.

“Crash course on Xibalba. Nine levels. The House of Dark, the House of Cold, the House of Jaguars, the House of Bats, and the House of Knives. That’s five of the tests prescribed by the lords of the underworld. In addition, there are three rivers, the river of scorpions, the river of blood, and the river of pestilence. Should you cross these, you come to the final level, the seat of the gods.”

“You’re expected to greet the gods, but they’ve put up images of themselves—illusions that look like the real thing. And if you make the mistake of greeting the wrong gods, you’re dumped into the most humiliating and terrifying of the tests. It may eventually kill you, but the point is to make your debasement last as long as possible for the amusement of the gods.”

“This is their sport? Why would anyone go? Where’s the value?”

The woman shrugged. “They are powerful and knowledgeable in their way. I can’t know why you’re on this path. Do the lords of the dead have someone you love? They are jealous gods and will give up their hard-won subjects only if they’re tricked and defeated.”

Isa stared at her. Someone she loved? “No.”

Certainly not Daniel. She was sorry he’d died. She hadn’t wished that upon him. He’d earned his results. She did not want him back.

Only Murmur.

Was that it? She imagined she loved someone—something that wasn’t even human?

Still. The Mayan gods of the dead must have something she needed. Or she had something they needed. Ruth, Joseph, and Henry had taught her that much. The gods didn’t take notice of you unless you could serve their purpose. Or unless you or your people needed something only they could provide.

Very well. She’d been trained for this. Hadn’t she? Shamanic journeying hadn’t been her teachers’ strong suit. The Navajo weren’t entirely shamanic. But they’d made certain she’d trained. First with an Apache elder and then with an Irish woman who’d trained in the druidic ways of her people.

Isa had a few paltry tools.

“Xibalba isn’t meant to be survived,” the woman said. “Not by humans.”

“How did the Hero Twins survive?”

“They didn’t,” she said. “They cut themselves into pieces, then restored themselves.”

Isa frowned.

“Agricultural demigods.”

“Vegetative regeneration,” Isa said. “Not that it helps me much.”

“There is a door,” she said. Her voice had deepened, become more resonant. Heads came up across the room. Eyes turned in their direction. The woman’s tattoo, speaking through her.

“Hail, Kukulcan. I have no offering with which to honor your aspect.” If the spirit enlivening the tattoo really was some tiny fragment of a god, Isa would be respectful. If playing to the spirit’s ego gave her further information about what was happening and why—she’d play along.

The woman inclined her head, though Isa doubted seriously that she had control of her body at the moment.

“Lack is the nature of this place.”

Isa nodded.

“There is a door between worlds.”

There were many doors between many worlds, but at the moment, only one concerned her. And which mattered to Living Ink throughout Western Washington. “Yes.”

“If it opens, it will destroy us. The fifth age has ended, as the counting of my people foretold. But what would come through that door would erase the people of this world as if they had never been. The sixth age would die aborning. Humankind. Every creature of the earth, sea, and sky. Not even the gods would survive the dismantling of this age.”

He was talking about Uriel.

Did Murmur’s nemesis have so much power that he could destroy this world? How did she fight that?

“So the gods of the dead are trying to stop me from locking the door?”

“Their greed for blood and death and suffering knows no bounds. It is possible. Or. It is possible even their rotting hearts know the fear of their unmaking. This test you face. This cold. It spans realities. Learn its shape. Understand its depths and its extent and its limits. Find your own thereby. Knowledge is the only power.”

“No, it isn’t,” she surprised herself by saying. “Love is power, too. Of a different kind.”

Kukulcan inclined his host’s head, and then rose and walked away, retreating to the far side of the room, where the woman burrowed beneath a pile of blankets shared by four other women.